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Mysterion at Boskone

Join us at Boskone this weekend! We'll be hosting a party on Saturday night at the Westin Hotel (Room 405); come for sweet and savory refreshments (including homemade cookies), and to find out what you can expect to see here at Mysterion in the months ahead.

Kristin also has a full schedule of panel participation (see below), plus a reading from some of her own fiction on Saturday morning, so you can also check that out if you're interested in what Boskone has to offer during the day.

Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) techniques for gene editing are said to find wide application in the food industry, raising the possibility of food that won’t spoil so fast. Or pigs that carry less harmful fat. Such genetically modified organisms (GMOs) carry considerable promise — plus a fat load of questions about possible consequences. Let’s talk about the future of food.

Resolved: science fiction, fantasy, and horror are perfect genres in which to explore ideas and philosophies, especially aspects of religion and faith. True? If so or not so, why? And what dangers do we face in creating new religions (*cough* Hubbard), or in these kinds of speculations generally?

Rajnar Vajra, Kristin Janz, Janice Gelb (M), Inanna Arthen

The Scientific Method in SF

17 Feb 2018, Saturday 15:00 - 16:00, Marina 2 (Westin)

Scientists abound in science fiction. Do these characters behave like real scientists, the good and the bad? Which authors get it right as they present positive images of scientists, and depict the way they work? The "mad scientist" is a common type in our literature — but is that really the way scientists go wrong?

Notes: Sir Francis Bacon's method of reasoning, put forward in 1620, was the first attempt to codify what scientists do. While his can be said to be the first word, we haven't heard the last word on the scientific method. Names like Kant, Ayer, Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, and Feyerabend have had their say.

Field Medicine in a Fantasy World

18 Feb 2018, Sunday 14:00 - 15:00, Harbor III (Westin)

After fighting orcs or falling into a ravine, you can come out with more than cuts and bruises. Yet without modern medicine, our fantasy heroes are often left to their own devices to stitch themselves back together. What tips and tricks should they know? What nearby items — plants, herbs, spyderwebs — might be helpful? But also: why isn’t there tons more toothache, child mortality, and gangrene in Fantasielande?